


Rhiannon

by TheForkingSupreme



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Coven
Genre: F/F, slight AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-02-01 05:07:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21390448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheForkingSupreme/pseuds/TheForkingSupreme
Summary: Misty is drawn to a life force at Miss Robichaux's Academy prior to the (present) events of Coven, while Cordelia is deeply struggling after a miscarriage.
Relationships: Misty Day/Cordelia Foxx | Cordelia Goode
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	1. Dreams Unwind

The bird that Misty found in the field that day wasn’t the only thing that she had brought back to life. Well, as of that day it had been. But…that wasn’t all there was to the story.   
-  
The young witch had been watching the school for months prior to her formal arrival at Miss Robichaux’s. Although still very innocent and largely unaware of the ways of the world, she’d become far more cautious after having been burnt at the stake. Being killed by the community that raised you will tend to have that effect on a girl. She wasn’t exactly sure about what the school was, exactly, and certainly hadn’t been aware at first that it was a school for witches. It wasn’t even until Kyle was reanimated that she even truly recognized that there were witches who lived there (although that had certainly informed her enthusiasm when she met Zoe.  
The first time, Misty happened upon the school somewhat by accident. She’d been following her gut, as she usually did. Living beings has certain energy signature, and dead things (and resurrected things) had a similar signature. It was how she found the gators, and part of how she later found Kyle…

  
It was also how she found the baby. She was small- too small- never born, as a matter of fact. More of a fetus, really, than anything. It didn’t seem fair that she hadn’t been given a chance at life. This was different, Misty knew, than bringing the bird or the gators back to life. Rhiannon, perhaps, wasn’t meant to live. Misty had no reason to believe that anything had been done to the child to cause her death, perhaps it was just an act of nature. But something about the small, alien-like creature called to her- and Misty answered, just as she always did. 

  
The child had been buried out behind the greenhouse, a secret spot that Cordelia had carefully selected. As a matter of fact, Misty had been called and arrived just in time to see Cordelia bury her.

  
It was nearly midnight, and the part of the yard that Cordelia occupied was illuminated faintly by a couple of candles, in addition to the back-porch lights which were always left on for straggling students (although technically the girls were not to leave during the night). The older woman was sobbing, but silently. Her shoulders shook at the effort it took to contain her distress, and once or twice a strangled noise escaped. She covered her mouth with her hands, letting herself fall to the ground, simple black circle skirt fanning out around her as she descended. The moonlight caught the tear tracks leading down her face. She was gorgeous, albeit in a tragic sort of way. Misty wasn’t sure that she’d ever sensed distress of this magnitude- and certainly never this particular flavor. 

  
It was almost as though Misty could taste Cordelia’s tears, feel the sobs and gasps burning at her lungs. Misty moved closer to the woman, although still shrouded in darkness and shadow. For good measure, though, she hid behind a tree. Eventually Cordelia fell asleep there, which posed a problem for Misty, who had been waiting for the woman to depart so that she might investigate the creature who had called out to her. Fortunately, Hank came out shortly thereafter to retrieve his wife, carrying her back into the house. 

  
Misty edged towards the fresh pile of dirt, brushing it gently to the side. What she found was a small cloth sack, black, almost like a cross between a funeral shroud and Scrabble tile bag. Misty opened the sack and peered inside. She could barely make out the faint shape of something that looked almost human, but impossibly small and covered in blood. Misty reached a hand inside of the sack, concentrating on breathing the life back into the tiny creature. Misty then tucked the sack very gently into her bag, uncertain if her efforts had done anything.

  
“Don’t worry, darlin’. I’ll do whatever I can to get you right as rain. I can feel ya callin’ to me, so I know yer still in there. Just gotta hang in there and have a little patience, lil’ bean.”   
-  
When Misty returned to her shack, she pulled around a planter that currently housed a small herb garden. She gently uprooted her plants, to be relocated later, and filled the planter with mud, placing the tiny being in the center. 

  
“I sure hope ya ain’t gonna take as long to grow here as you would’ve inside yer mama. But it’s all right with me if ya do. I’m just dyin’ ta meet ya, little one.”  
-  
In the immediate aftermath of her loss, Cordelia was beside herself with grief. It was a familiar grief that she knew all too well, but it also felt new and entirely different. The loss of a child, or possibility of a child, whatever the correct terminology was, was entirely too much for Cordelia as a general principle- but having the tangible reality of what she conceived of as failure was beyond anything she could have imagined. The entire fertility process seemed unfair and almost as though it were designed to punish her- for, well, for what? She wasn’t entirely sure. For failing to be adequately grown, perhaps? Her lack of assertiveness? All Delia knew was that it was entirely unfair she had been thrust upon Fiona, who hadn’t wanted her- and Delia herself, despite her deeply maternal nature, was being denied to opportunity to create a child from her own body. She wasn’t sure who was denying her this opportunity, but it sure didn’t feel like an accident.

  
To make matters worse, being pregnant and being a mother were the only two things that Cordelia had ever dreamt about, the only things that she had wanted out of life. It was true that she romanticized the experience a bit too much, and that, perhaps, these goals seemed a bit old fashioned, but she hadn’t wanted to do these things out of any sort of obligation to tradition or some conception of propriety. No, she’d always conceived of it more in terms of an animalistic instinct.  
Delia pulled a well-worn hardcovered copy of The Loving Spirit down from the bookcase in her office. The novel was her happy place, her solace. She wasn’t sure why, given her own familial circumstances, she was drawn so deeply into this intergenerational narrative, but it was a world that she could not get enough of. Not only that, but the vivid description of Janet giving birth to her child out in nature, her wildness, on all fours- something about this spoke to the primal urge within Delia that she could not shake not matter how hard she tried. 

  
Hank hated when Cordelia read. He always said it put her into a weird mood. She suspected it had something to do with the fact that it meant she wasn’t paying attention to him, but she also had a sinking feeling that he didn’t much care for her mind. He certainly hated it anytime she brought up her feelings or desires, although that seemed strange because he at least seemed to be invested in having a child with her. Anyway, this was why she preferred to keep her treasured tomes in her office as opposed to the bedroom. He did not like being in that room, nor did she like him being there, so it had turned into one of her more treasured havens in the house- the other, of course, being the greenhouse. She’d have to process her grief and loss a bit more before heading back out there, however. She of course missed her plants, and they would suffer, but she needed space from all of her many failed attempts at fertility, and this was the only way.   
\--  
When Misty was called back into the city, to the morgue, she wanted nothing less than to be there. The baby had started to develop its own vibration, its own life force, and she wanted nothing more than to be constantly surrounded by its presence. Babies were simple, and certainly less terrifying than the general population. A baby couldn’t burn her at the stake. When she discovered she’d picked up on Franken-boy, she was none too pleased, neither did she particularly care to deal with the witches who had done the deed. Although, only the other hand, a very deep-seated part of her soul longed for camaraderie and there was a chance that these girls could be a part of her tribe. She’d never spent a substantial amount of time with other witches, so this opportunity was in some ways more exciting than she could stand. 

  
Taking care of Kyle back at the shack proved to be more difficult than she had bargained for. Particularly since when he was awake and active, his motor skills and anger management were lacking. Which, of course, would have been fine, if it weren’t for the fact that she was growing a baby as well. Rhiannon seemed to be growing more rapidly than anticipated, judging by the size of the lump in the mud. This pleased Misty to no end, but it made hospitality awfully difficult at times. As much as she valued having the company, and as gentle as Kyle often was, there were moments of pure terror when he got frustrated or off-balance that her protective instincts for the tiny human got the better of her. Misty had never particularly thought of herself as a maternal figure, in fact, she’d never really considered the subject before. But Misty’s bond with this child- whoever she was- was something stronger than anything she’d felt in a long time, perhaps stronger than any bond she’d ever felt. She couldn’t quite explain it, but this tiny not-yet-fully-alive human felt like a part of her tribe. She could feel it in the same part of her being that her magic flowed from, somewhere deep down in her chest, her very essence.  
-  
As the months dragged on, Cordelia had a difficult time focusing on her work, which was not surprising considering all that had happened, she supposed. She’d always been good at compartmentalizing her feelings and distracting herself through her work. Well, at least since Fiona had abandoned her at the Academy. It was weird though- Cordelia expected to feel something more akin to grief after her miscarriage. It wasn’t her first, not nearly, so perhaps she was beginning to get used to it. Still…something was different this time. Perhaps it was nothing more than the fact that she was also learning to cope with her blindness and the trauma of the acid attack itself, in addition to trying to take care of her girls. Her mother’s reappearance and constant interference with her plans for the school were probably not helping matters any.

  
Instead of the grief she knew and expected, she began to feel…well, she couldn’t quite describe it. It was almost as though she had made a mistake, as though…the miscarriage wasn’t real. And yet, she wasn’t in denial- she had, after all, physically been through the hell of losing a much-wanted child. She had buried her never-born baby in the backyard herself. 

  
It had been a number of months since the miscarriage, she was still often tempted to go back out to the mound of dirt and dig up the fetus. Although everything with the coven had been hectic in the months since the miscarriage, and she’d been running around putting out literal and figurative fires so much that she barely had a chance to breathe, let alone thing, there were still moments like this. Moments of relative calm and stillness between the madness where she had nothing else to deal with and the grief seeped back in. It wasn’t out of any sort of morbid curiosity- and mostly she didn’t actually follow through with digging up the grave because the sight of a decomposing fetus would likely scar her for life- but she felt she needed to be convinced that it had happened. Of course, she’d only even be able to “see” the corpse if her second sight decided to cooperate…and the possibility of feeling a decomposing fetus was more horrifying than almost anything else she could imagine. Nonetheless, she felt a desire- almost a need, to be sure that her child was dead. She knew it sounded crazy- she never would have admitted this feeling to anyone. 

  
Since the attack, Delia had spent most of her time on her own, trapped in her own mind. There wasn’t anyone around that she felt comfortable relying on fully- not after learning what she had about Hank and her mother, and she would never burden the girls with her troubles. They had enough going on as it was, and she was doing a poor enough job of educating them and keeping them safe. If she revealed any more struggle to them than necessary, it would only undercut her authority and their confidence in her abilities further. 

  
Learning to do things for herself through touch had been a slow-going and risky process. Touching anything held the risk of being affronted by a vision- and most often one of something that she did not particularly care to know. She didn’t resent her gift, but it was certainly draining, and Cordelia could only muster so much energy to get through her tasks any given day. She needed to be sure to allot the correct amount of energy to each priority task while leaving enough in reserves to be able to deal with the extra time it took to do simple tasks without her eyes as well as any manner of ridiculous unforeseen situation may arise. Touching more objects (or people for that matter) than necessary raised the risk that she’d deplete her energy stores too soon, leaving her girls and/or herself vulnerable. As it was, Fiona was taking on a much larger role in their protection and education than Cordelia was comfortable with, but Fiona was the Supreme after all, so there wasn’t much to be done about that.   
-  
Meanwhile, at the swamp, Misty was watering her plants when she caught a glimpse of something stirring. She turned her attention to the pot of mud that she’d gently tucked the baby into and tended to. Misty knew that the mud had incredible healing properties, and she gathered that it accelerated the process, but clearly she had no experience with using it as a replacement womb. The baby was now fully developed, enveloped only in a thin layer of mud as she seemed to have wiggled her way out. As Misty neared, she heard the child gurgling and rushed to clear out her airway. Misty lifted the child to her chest, not caring as the mud seeped through the layers of her airy white cotton dress. The baby girl cried as Misty gently wiped her face clean. Misty sang to her as she had often over the past couple months, always seeming to return to Rhiannon. She set the child down on a towel in the sink to begin sponge bathing her and examined her face carefully.

  
“I wonder if you’re gonna get to lookin’ like your mama, lil’ one. I didn’t get ta see her all up close like, but from what I could see, she sure was stunning. I think I will keep calling ya Rhiannon. Seems to suit you.”

  
The baby cooed, and Misty grinned. 

  
“Well then, it’s decided.”


	2. Will You Ever Win?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Misty continues to tend to the child; Cordelia makes a discovery, is nearly inconsolable but finds direction from a trusted friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all!
> 
> Thanks for the warm reception on the first chapter of this- it took a lot longer to get this chapter up than I had hoped, but most likely the next will have a shorter turnaround!
> 
> Thank you for reading, comments greatly appreciated!

Cordelia had always loved rules. She liked to know that she was doing what she was meant to do, what was right. It was out of intense naiveté that she believed rules were inherently good and breaking them was inherently bad, a notion of which she would be disabused often and rather traumatically, but nonetheless one that she clung to. It was the only comfort that she had known as a child, and the only way that she knew to make sense out of the chaotic situation in which she found herself. 

The only time in recent memory that she had intentionally broken the rules was when she had gone to Marie Laveau to inquire about the pochaut medecine, and that had not gone well. Obviously. In Cordelia’s mind, this was because it was a departure from the natural order. The way that Cordelia saw nature was simply as another set of rules. It was part of why she liked botany and her “little chemistry experiments,” as Fiona had always called them. It showed that there was a connection between her powers, witchcraft, and the rules of nature. It was how she’d convinced herself she wasn’t going to hell when she was younger, how she contradicted the constant barrage of well-meaning Christians intent on converting her. But dark magic, which is to say, magic that dealt with matters of life and death, was the sort of thing that came at great personal cost- not the least of which being that it was immoral- in other words, bad. Not consistent with the way Cordelia viewed herself. 

The only thing in the world worth such a sacrifice (of her moral compass) would have been the creation of a child, she had thought. But, as she saw it, although there were steps, although the pochaut medecine was not so very different from the sort of witchcraft Cordelia taught, there was no consistently reliable method to determine whether it would work. There was a lot more guesswork. Or at least, it felt that way to Cordelia, perhaps because she couldn’t tap into the energy behind this sort of voodoo magic. It was a different set of rules, which was something that Cordelia had difficulty accepting.

In any event, Cordelia’s willingness to abandon her principles, her belief in rules, in order to have a child demonstrated her dedication to the cause. And when Marie denied her despite her desperation because of Fiona’s idiocy, she had no idea where to turn next. 

So, Cordelia did the only think that she could think of. She started feeling around- literally- for clues. Although she knew she risked depleting her energy stores, leaving the coven and herself vulnerable to attack, she couldn’t help it. She wanted a baby more than anything. And no matter how many days went by, she couldn’t shake off the desire to find her baby. Any time she thought of the tiny mass of cells she had buried in the backyard, she got a strange tugging feeling in her chest, like their story wasn’t quite over yet. Like that child needed her. 

In the wake of Kyle and Madison’s reanimations, Cordelia got to thinking that perhaps she hadn’t tried everything to keep her baby alive. Surely, she could have tried harder to get Fiona’s help (not that she would’ve given it), or perhaps she’d underestimated her own abilities? After all, if Madison and Zoe could bring someone back to life without using vitalum vitalis, maybe she should’ve looked into other spells. Heck, she hadn’t even had the confidence to try vitalum vitalis alone, in the dark, with no one around to judge her for what she assumed would be her failure. But she’d been warned aggressively her whole life against using any sort of magic that dealt with life or death. 

Messing with the “natural order” could have grave consequences, allegedly, but…in the wake of what had just happened with her girls, she was beginning to believe that perhaps those warnings were a bit overblown. And her baby had not been frankensteined together assemblage of parts. Truly, she could not see what would have been so bad about that. Rather than moving through the grief of loss, with every minute that went by Cordelia became more and more consumed with guilt and the compulsion to try to remedy the mistake. She’d heard a lot of stories and read a lot of coven history books (before she’d lost her sight), and thinking about it now, she could not put together and adequate case against trying to bring her baby back. Well, apart from the fact that she wasn’t sure how she’d ever find her way back to the tiny plot without her eyes. 

-

Rhiannon was six months old, and splashing around in her makeshift bathtub, which ordinarily served as Misty’s laundry tub. Baby Rhiannon’s favorite thing in the world seemed to be bath time, or anything to do with water, really. She was fascinated by the halfway functional faucet in the kitchen, the swamp water (which she’d only seen briefly from Misty’s arms and desperately wanted to touch). Rhiannon was most at peace when it was raining, which was something that she had in common with Misty. 

-

  
“Cordelia? What in the world are you doing out here in this rain?” Myrtle’s sing-songy lilt intoned from several yards away. Delia was hunched over a fresh, wet pile of earth, which was turning rapidly into a tiny mudslide. Delia, clad only in a formerly white nightgown, now translucent and plastered against her skin from the precipitation and caked with brown-black soil, did not move. She didn’t even seem to recognize that she was being spoken to. 

Myrtle reluctantly walked towards the younger woman, shielding her designer rainboots and trench coat with a large black umbrella. She crouched beside the young woman with a sigh, noting that Cordelia was the only person on the planet she would do such a thing for. She gently reached a hand out and set it on Cordelia’s shoulder, trying not to startle her too much. 

“Cordelia, darling, you’re as white as that garish garment Marilyn Monroe wore standing over that subway grate and you’re shaking like a leaf. What on earth is the matter?”

Cordelia slowly turned her tearstained, dirt-streaked face to Myrtle, catching her gaze. 

“She’s gone,” Delia cried, despondent. 

“Who, dear?”

Cordelia shivered, and Myrtle led her back into the house. 

“Come, Cordelia, let’s get you warmed up.”

The girls were too absorbed with some stupid dating app to take much notice of the two older women, of course taking the piss out of one another as they swiped through potential mates with whom they had no intention of meeting up. Madison had raised an eyebrow when she saw the soaking wet, shivering Cordelia stumble through the kitchen, but given her recent assault, she was feeling just the slightest bit charitable and decided to hold her tongue. 

Myrtle helped to bathe Cordelia, after of course changing into a designer bathrobe. She had done this on only a couple of occasions in the past, never having been particularly maternal in a traditional sense. But then, Myrtle was the most like a mother figure of anyone Cordelia had ever known, so it’s not as if Cordelia thought anything much of Myrtle’s awkwardness and rigidity. 

The first time Myrtle had to manage a completely despondent, inconsolable Cordelia had been right after her mother had left her. This had come as no surprise, given that Cordelia had never known life without her mother, ruthless as she was, and, well, since she was still a child. Myrtle had simply held the child, a behavior which was entirely foreign to her, but in that moment had seemed essential.

The second time had been after her first boyfriend had broken up with her after she had accidentally set his shirt on fire. Cordelia had been all of fourteen, bookish, shy. Extremely naïve, perhaps for lack of sufficient peer interaction. Myrtle had handled this rather poorly, having little to offer in the way of relating to such social interaction, given the pitiful state of the school in Fiona’s absence. Furthermore, romance had never been something that Myrtle had pursued or been particularly good at, and men seemed to have the tendency to turn away from her. She’d stumbled through a talk on safe sex, which had Cordelia wide-eyed, stunned, but at least not crying anymore. 

The third, fourth, and fifth had all pertained to Hank being a jackass. Pretty self-explanatory. By that point, Myrtle had learned to just sit, listen, reassure, feed. It was uncomfortable, of course, given Myrtle’s contentious relationship with Fiona, but some

And then…there was this. Truthfully, Myrtle had been unable to imagine what could possibly have her dear, sweet girl in such a state. But then, ironically, Myrtle’s biggest blindspot when it came to Cordelia was the younger woman’s obsession with motherhood and mothering. In retrospect, it wasn’t especially surprising that Cordelia would have such strong and complicated feelings- but Myrtle’s own life experience was so far removed from any such consideration that it never really crossed her mind. 

It wasn’t that Myrtle had a perfect home life of her own growing up. In the Snow household, there had been a lot more sharing of money than emotions. It hadn’t been a surprise when she’d been sent away to the Academy – her presence had never been quite welcome, and her older brother was already off to boarding school by the time Myrtle saw fit to come into existence. The only family she’d known was cold and aloof, although not ill-intentioned or actively harmful, so Myrtle had never fully come to comprehend the scars that Fiona’s abuse had left on her daughter. 

-

“You had a miscarriage…?” Myrtle inquired, hoping to elicit a few more words so she could piece together some sort of context for the breakdown she’d walked in on. 

Cordelia nodded, still struggling to steady her breathing. 

“The- she- I-“ Cordelia hiccoughed. She paused, struggling to take a long, slow breath, which to her dismay was punctuated by further hiccoughs. “I’m sorry, Auntie Myrtle. What I was…trying to say is that I buried her out in the back- where you found me. The baby, that is. And I…she’s not…there anymore. It’s not…I mean I…cast a protection spell over the spot where…and none of the dirt was turned up, so it couldn’t have been an animal…I just…I don’t understand…”

Myrtle raised her eyebrows as she lit a cigarette, leaning back in her chair. 

“That does seem rather odd… Did Hank know about this? Could he perhaps have interfered somehow?”

“No, at least, I don’t think so. I mean, I didn’t tell him about it…I suppose he could’ve figured it out. He did come out there after…I don’t know. I really can’t remember, it’s all so hazy.”

“Did you see anything when you were pawing through the mud?” Myrtle asked, her inquiry tinged with disdain.

“No…at least…I don’t think so.”

“Perhaps you ought to try the nursery. I assume you’ve kept it intact?”

“How did you--?”

“Oh, darling, I know you. Always over prepared, as though you can will the future into existence by being prepared for the outcome you most want. The opposite of your mother, really.”

Cordelia sighed.

“Okay, well, yes. I don’t have enough students to occupy all of the rooms…so…I do have some baby stuff.”

“In that case, perhaps it would be wise to try and solve this puzzle rather than sitting here crying over a broken egg.”

Cordelia allowed Myrtle to take the lead – literally and metaphorically – trusting that, as always, Myrtle knew best and had Cordelia’s best interest at heart.


End file.
